California Scheming

MARK WHEELER /
Smithsonian v.33, n.7, Oct02

AT THE MOMENT, CHRIS PLAKOS IS A LITTLE EMBARRASSED. THE PUBLIC RELATIONS
MANAGER for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is looking for a river
he can't find. We're driving down a road 200 miles from Los Angeles, in the
Owens Valley, which parallels the Sierra Nevada for about 100 miles. Plakos'
employer owns most of this valley, having obtained it decades ago by means that
may fairly be called ruthless. Plakos wants to show me how, these days, the
municipal utility has become more enlightened toward the region and its
residents.

We know the river is east of us, so it should be a simple matter of pointing
the rented SUV in that direction. But we are caught in a whiteout caused not by
snow but by salt, blowing off a dry lake bed to the south. The cloud contains
microscopic particles of nickel, cadmium and arsenic, which at high doses have
been shown to cause cancer in animals.

We keep the windows rolled up tight.

Plakos is also embarrassed because the salt-out is traceable to his
employer's past policies, and the utility, in a his toric turnaround after
decades of hostility and acrimony, recently agreed to do something about the
problem. So he doesn't need this possibly toxic atmospheric pollution just now.
These dust storms, which have long plagued the area whenever the wind is just
so, arise from Owens Lake. Once a shallow no-square-mile body of briny water
that still managed to support an abundance of grasses, birds and other wildlife,
it was drained decades ago by L.A.'s seemingly bottomless demand for water,
transforming the lake into a vast, dusty, cracked-white patch of high desert.
It's the most visible casualty in the battle for the water that turned Los
Angeles into a major metropolis-a battle about to be rejoined as the city eyes
untapped water sources beneath the Mojave Desert.

In the final analysis, it's not the balmy climate or the s 3i billion a year
the entertainment industry generates for the city that makes Los Angeles
possible. It's water. Without it, the town one newcomer in the 1860s called a
"vile little dump" (pop. 13,000 would never have evolved into the
second most populous city in the United States.

L.A.'s 19th-century movers and shakers knew that the city's health and
prosperity depended upon the availability of freshwater. Los Angeles sits on a
semiarid coastal plain, with desert on three sides and the Pacific Ocean on the
fourth. Freshwater was limited to the meager flow of the Los Angeles River, now
a much-maligned concrete channel, and the paltry 15 inches of rain that the area
averages a year.

THE SPIGOT FOR LOS ANGELES IS LOCATED NORTH OF Owens Lake and the small town
of independence, off US 395 and down a mile of bad road. It consists of nothing
more than two 2o-foot-long concrete blocks. Here, on the eastern slope of the
Sierra 4,000 feet above sea level, the Owens River, which used to meander the
valley's entire length before emptying into Owens Lake, smacks abruptly into a
concrete barricade. Then it is directed to a manmade, arrow-straight dirt
channel.

This is the gateway of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Nearly a century ago an army
of 5,000 men used dynamite, steam shovels, dredging machines and mules to dig
out 233 miles of canals and tunnels. They carved the aqueduct out of unforgiving
terrain, laying pipe across searing stretches of desert and going over, and
often through, solid Sierra rock. Completed in 1913, the aqueduct still carries
up to 315 million gallons of water a day to thirsty Angelenos.

You might think this engineering marvel worthy of notice. After all, it is
largely responsible for the Southern California of today, as well as the
ever-innovating city that has shaped so much of American life and world culture.
But there's no roadside attraction here, no plaque, no visitors. Just wind, the
gurgle of water and the occasional distant whine of a car speeding along US 395.
The only marker is etched into one of the concrete walls: "A.D. MCMXI, LOS
ANGELES AQUEDUCT INTAKE."

The low profile likely reflects the fact that as the aqueduct carried away
the valley's water, it also carried away the local economy. It left Owens Valley
farmers and ranchers high and dry. They responded with lawsuits, protests-and
finally, dynamite of their own.

The Owens Valley water war has provoked impassioned debate and been the
subject of numerous books. It also provided the backstory to the 1974 film
Chinatown, which, though fiction, has contributed to the popular perception that
Los Angeles raped the Owens Valley. Others contend that the area's economics
were spiraling downward anyway and that California's future lay inevitably on
its southern coast. The truth, as usual, is more complicated.

TO BE SURE, A CRITICAL PART OF THE AQUEDUCT STORY IS the tale of wealthy Los
Angeles businessmen speculating in real estate. They included Harrison Gray Otis
and his son-in-law, Harry Chandler, owner and publisher, respectively, of the
Los Angeles Times; E. H. Harriman, president of the Southern Pacific railroad;
and Moses Sherman, a real estate developer and member of the city's water board,
which established policy for this utility. Otis would use the Times'
considerable influence to rally support for the aqueduct. Most historians
believe that Otis and his colleagues engaged in shadowy dealings and traded on
inside information, learning ahead of the public (probably from Sherman) where
the aqueduct would terminate and where excess water would be stored-in the water
table under the San Fernando Valley, adjacent to Los Angeles. All told, Otis and
his colleagues bought 16,000 acres of this valley, which they later sold at a
handsome profit.

But the main story of the greening of Los Angeles centers on two other men:
William Mulholland and Frederick Eaton. Different as night and day, they were
warm friends before becoming bitter enemies. Without their efforts, the aqueduct
would not have been built; yet the project would prove to be each man's undoing.

An Irish immigrant, Mulholland was blunt-spoken, almost six feet tall with
curly hair and a bushy mustache. He was in his 20S when he settled in L.A. in
the late 1870s, after stints as a sailor, dry goods merchant and lumberjack. His
first job in the city-at $1.50 per day-was as a deputy zanjero, or irrigation
ditch tender, with the privately owned Los Angeles Water Company. But Mulholland
was too ambitious to remain a zanjero for long. Teaching himself mathematics,
hydraulics and geology, he became a hydraulic engineer within two years, foreman
within eight, and then, at 31, superintendent, a position he retained after the
city purchased the water company.

For some of that time his boss was Frederick Eaton, a Los Angeles native
raised in a well-to-do family. In contrast to the rough-hewn Mulholland, Eaton
was sophisticated and polished. He loved his native city, serving as
superintendent and chief engineer of the L.A. Water Company and then, from 1898
to 1900, as mayor of L.A.

By 1900, L.A.'s population stood at 102,000, twice what it had been a mere
decade earlier. By 1904, the figure had again nearly doubled. As the population
rose, the water table began to drop. Some estimates suggested that the Los
Angeles River would provide enough water for no more than 250,000 people. Both
Eaton and Mulholland realized an entirely new source was needed.

Mulholland began looking throughout Southern California for an alternative
supply of freshwater, but it was Fred Eaton who came up with a solution. On a
camping trip to the Sierra in the early 1890s, Eaton had gazed down upon Owens
Lake and thought about all the freshwater flowing into it and going to waste.
Yes, Los Angeles was some 200 miles away, but it was all downhill. All one would
have to do to move it to the city was dig some canals, lay some pipe and let
gravity do the rest. Furthermore, he realized, several streams flowing out of
the Sierra could be used to generate hydroelectric power. Imagine, a
200-plus-mile aqueduct running downhill to L.A. and "free" power to
boot! Over the next two decades, as his civic interest joined his personal
financial interests, Eaton grew increasingly evangelical about Owens Valley
water.

In September 1904, he took Mulholland to Owens Valley with only "a mule
team, a buckboard, and a demijohn of whiskey," Mulholland later recalled.
Despite the hooch, it was the water and not the whiskey that made a believer out
of Mulholland. He readily endorsed Eaton's proposal to build an aqueduct. Eaton,
meanwhile, was buying water options from Owens Valley ranchers and farmers whose
pastures bordered the river, without disclosing the city's plan. He also
purchased a 23,000-acre cattle ranch in Long Valley, most of which he hoped to
sell to the city, at a tidy profit, for use as an aqueduct reservoir.

Historians differ on Eaton's motives. Some say he duped Owens Valley
residents. Others say his purchases, though cunning, were justifiable because
they benefited the city, which lacked the money to buy the land until voters
later approved a $1.5 million bond measure. To his dying day, Eaton denied
charges that he acted duplicitously.

Grandson John Eaton, who until a year ago lived on one of the last acres of
land in Long Valley passed down from his father, Harold Eaton, believes that his
grandfather had no need to double-deal. "People were seeking him out to
sell their property," he says. "They saw him as this crazy millionaire
who wanted to become a cattle baron and who was foolishly overpaying for land.
And they wanted to get out." It was a hardscrabble life, what with the
valley's short growing season, and the playing out of local gold and silver
mines, the market for its produce. Of course, had the sellers known the buyer in
the shadows was the city of Los Angeles, they wouldn't have sold their land so
cheaply, if at all.

In any event, when the ranchers and farmers learned the real story in
1905-"Titanic Project to Give the City a River" headlined the Los
Angeles Times that July-they were so angry that Eaton had to leave town for
awhile.

The construction of the aqueduct, under the direction 0f Mulholland,
proceeded quickly. To provide power for electric shovels, he erected two
hydroelectric plants-still in use today-on creeks that dump into the Owens
River. He also built some 500 miles of roads, ran telephone and telegraph lines
across 150 miles of desert, and laid down 268 miles 0f pipe to provide drinking
water for the workers.

Conditions were harsh. Temperatures in the Mojave Desert could swing 80
degrees in a single day. "In the winter, it was just as windy and bitter
cold as it was hot in summer," Raymond Taylor, the aqueduct's medical
director, said at the time. Over the six years of construction 0n the aqueduct,
43 men died out of the 5,000 or so who worked 0n it, a toll that some experts
say was rather low considering the scope of the project and the rugged terrain.

On November 5, 1913, Los Angeles officials staged a grand opening ceremony at
the aqueduct's terminus in the San Fernando Valley, with parades, fireworks and
speeches, including a famously terse one from Mulholland: "There it
is," he said, as the gates opened, "take it." Eaton did not
attend. His years of dreams of a real estate empire had come to naught.
Mulholland had balked at Eaton's price for the Long Valley land, which most
historians peg at $1 million-and refused to pay it. Consequently, the completed
aqueduct at first had no reservoir in the Long Valley area.

For a time, life in Owens Valley remained largely unaffected by the aqueduct.
Most farming and ranching took place at the valley's northern end, above the
aqueduct's intake point, so the river still provided plenty of water. Valley
produce still found a market, however reduced, at local mines, many of which
were still operating.

But things changed. People continued to pour into Los Angeles, and several
years of drought in the 19206 slowed the aqueduct's flow. To compensate, the
city began pumping groundwater directly from the aquifer beneath Owens Valley.
Starved of water, local farms and ranches failed. Businesses followed. Some
Owens Valley farmers sued Los Angeles and lost. Others began taking water direct
ly from the aqueduct. The city countered by buying valley property in a
checkerboard fashion-purchasing one farm but not the one next to it, which
pitted neighbor against neighbor.

Owens Valley residents took matters into their own hands at 1:30 A.M. on May
21, 1924. A caravan of cars with about 40 men set out from Bishop, the largest
town in Owens Valley, headed 6o miles south, and just north of Lone Pine,
dynamited the aqueduct's concrete canal. Six months later, a number of Owens
Valley residents, led by local banker Mark Watterson, seized the aqueduct's
Alabama Gates spillway, near Lone Pine and opened its gates, sending the
precious liquid back into the Owens River.

Mulholland was furious. He dispatched two carloads of gun-toting city
detectives to break up the siege. Trying to prevent bloodshed, the Owens Valley
sheriff warned them not to start trouble, saying, "I don't believe you will
live to tell the tale." The detectives backed down. Soon local families
arrived at the spillway, some bearing food; picnic blankets were spread and a
huge barbecue ensued. Movie cow boy Tom Mix, shooting a film on location nearby,
sent over his mariachi band to perform. The press arrived and took pictures. In
the meantime, Watterson's brother, Wilfred, also a banker, went to L.A. and
appeared before the Los Angeles Joint Clearinghouse Association, a group of
bankers, asking for a new commission to negotiate city payments to the valley.
When the bankers agreed, the siege ended peacefully.

But negotiations between the commission and Owens Valley locals, represented
by the Wattersons, dragged on. In December 1924, Wilfred Watterson presented the
commission with two invoices, one for $5.3 million in reparations to ranchers,
the other for $u million to purchase the remaining land in the valley. The
commission refused to pay.

Tensions between city and valley grew. Litigation ensued, but stalled in the
courts. The city bought more valley land, displacing farmers and ruining more
local businesses. Finally, valley frustrations reached another boiling point. On
May 20, 1927, several men detonated explosives outside Mojave, 10o miles north
of L.A., destroying a part of the aqueduct. A few days later, more blasts rocked
the aqueduct farther north and, on June 4, still another. A train filled with
L.A. detectives armed with Winchester carbines was sent to guard the aqueduct.

Though the detectives had no legal right to do so, they placed Owens Valley
under martial law. It didn't help. Over the next two months, seven more blasts
occurred at sites along the aqueduct, from Mojave in the south to Bishop in the
north, damaging pipes and a power plant and downing telegraph lines.

In the end, what broke the valley's spirit was malfeasance by two of its own.
In August, the Watterson brothers (whose bank dominated the valley economy were
arrested for embezzlement; they were later convicted on 36 counts. Some said the
brothers had merely been trying to stay afloat financially, and helping others
stay afloat, by moving money from one business account to another, recording
deposits never made and debits already paid. Their defenders pointed out that
none of the money ever left Inyo County. The state's prosecuting attorney, an
Owens Valley local and a friend of the brothers, was said to have cried while
delivering his final argument. The Wattersons were sentenced to ten years in San
Quentin and their five banks closed. Posted on the door of one was the message:
"This result has been brought about by the last four years of destructive
work carried on by the city of Los Angeles."

Fred Eaton, whose plan to sell his Long Valley ranch was stymied by the city,
now had worse problems. His son Harold had mortgaged it to the Wattersons' bank
in loans totaling s320,000. When the bank failed, the ranch went into
receivership and the city purchased it-for less than the $500,000 Mulholland had
offered ten years earlier.

Eaton died in 1934 at age 78, his dreams of fortune unfulfilled. "He was
bitter," says his grandson John Eaton, "because he felt he'd been made
the goat for all the troubles that came to ail the Owens Valley, and because he
felt he never got the proper credit for his role in the creation of the
aqueduct."

Mulholland, for his part, died a chastened man at 79, a year after Eaton's
death. A dam that Mulholland had built in San Francisquito Canyon, outside Los
Angeles, collapsed in 1928, less than 12 hours after he had inspected it and
pronounced it sound. A wall of water l00 feet high roared down the canyon,
sweeping away trees, homes, cars, a railroad trestle and animals, and killing at
least 400 people. Mulholland, although cleared of wrongdoing, blamed himself. He
soon retired from the water department and became a virtual recluse, a
"stooped and silent" old man, Catherine, his granddaughter, says. (In
the 1990s, David Rogers, a forensic geologist who studied the dam rupture,
concluded that while there were some flaws in the construction, it was a massive
landslide that felled the dam.)

Today most of the people residing in the Owens Valley make their living from
tourism, with the majority of skiers, fishermen, campers and so on coming from
(where else?) Los Angeles. Some ranches and farms still exist, but most of their
fields are leased from the L.A. Department of Water and Power. The bulk of Owens
Valley land is empty, its former vitality reduced to groupings of shade trees
where houses once stood; long, V-shaped ditches, once used to water fields, now
dusty and weed choked; an occasional concrete silo surrounded by sagebrush. The
aqueduct was extended north another l00 miles in the 1940s, to a second large
body of water, Mono Lake. Another entire aqueduct was built in 197o alongside
Mulholland's. Almost 100 years have passed since William Mulholland ruled the
roost, but for L.A.'s Department of Water and Power engineers, the mandate is
still the same: keep the water coming.

I'M STANDING SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF OWENS Lake-white, cracked, powder-dry
and stretching off in every direction-with Ted Schade, an engineer and senior
project manager for a tiny regional agency, the Great Basin Unified Air
Pollution Control District. The agency is responsible for enforcing the federal
Clean Air Act in Owens Valley, and thanks largely to it, things here are looking
up.

Right now, the wind is still, and it's OK to breathe. Yesterday, upwind and
north of the lake, I saw a huge white cloud boiling off the lake bed. According
to the Environmental Protection Agency, when the wind blows, this lake is the
single largest source of particulate matter pollution in the United States.

Schade's agency has been David to the Los Angeles utility's Goliath since the
mid-1980s, when the city, responding to a California state law, was required to
pay several million dollars a year to monitor the air and figure out how best to
stop the pollution (which meant, in effect, that the city paid the salaries of
its antagonists). In 1997, Schade's group approved a plan that ordered the city
to flood the dry lake bed with water or grow a salt-tolerant grass.

Where the water came from was up to the city, but of course, the only readily
available water was from the aqueduct. "The city just went crazy,"
says Schade. "They filed a lawsuit, tried to withhold money, and appealed
the plan to the state of California."

Then the utility's new general manager, S. David Freeman (now California
Governor Gray Davis' energy czar), called a truce. "He just said what the
city was doing was wrong," says Schade, "and within a couple of weeks
we had an agreement." Grudgingly, the city agreed to have ten square miles
of dust control measures in place by 2001, with incremental improvements after
that.

By November 2001, diversion of some of the aqueduct's precious water had
begun; by January 2002, more than 7,600 acres of dusty Owens Lake bed had been
submerged in a few inches of water. But more remains to be done. In other
sections of the lake bed, the city is currently planting more than 2,600 acres
with hardy native grass that tolerates high salt and both freezing and
blistering temperatures. The project is scheduled to be complete by 2006, by
which time Los Angeles should have implemented dust control measures on more
than 14,000 acres of Owens Lake bed, using about 50,000 acre-feet of water a
year, enough to supply almost a quarter of a million people.

If water politics in Southern California today are no longer as
rough-and-tumble as in Mulholland's era, controversy continues to surround the
struggle to meet the demand for water in the fast-growing region.

In one recent flap, water officials representing the greater Los Angeles area
have struck a preliminary agreement with a private firm that owns large parcels
of the Mojave Desert and controls access to an aquifer there. The firm, Cadiz
Inc., proposes to service Southern California by pumping water out of the
aquifer as well as using it to store water diverted from the Colorado River. The
project, though approved by the Department of the Interior, still faces
opposition from California Senator Dianne Feinstein and some environmentalists.
In stating their concerns that drawing water from the aquifer will damage the
fragile desert ecosystem, opponents also note that the aquifer runs under two
dry lakes, and specifically cited what happened to Owens Lake as an example of
what could go wrong.

Maybe that will be Owens Lake's legacy, says Schade: an object lesson for
what not to do. "Hopefully, everyone has learned from the mistakes that
were made here."

Los Angeles-based freelancer Mark Wheeler wrote last for SMITHSONIAN about
volcanic unrest in California's Long Valley.

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